


Can't you ever clear up in here?

by Jake



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: M/M, Malec, tidying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:10:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jake/pseuds/Jake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magnus' flat is messy. Alec gets annoyed. They(Alec) tidy it(and Magnus makes things fly across the room at Alec's head).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't you ever clear up in here?

“What, no ‘hi honey, I’m home’?”, drawled a familiar voice as Alec closed the door behind him quietly, and he turned around to see Magnus smirking at him from where he was perched on the kitchen counter.  
Rolling his eyes fondly, he approached his boyfriend, but found his progress across the room impeded by a large box in the middle of the floor which he was certain hadn’t been there yesterday morning, when he left to check in at the Institute. Attempting to move around it, he almost stepped on an empty wine glass, before stumbling on a pile of magazines that nearly reached his knee. Almost lazily, Magnus raised one gloved hand and clicked, freezing everything in the cluttered room; the stack of magazines halted just before they began to cascade onto the floor, the large clock on the wall stopped ticking at 5:22pm, and Alec was immobilised in the air, balanced precariously on one foot and his arms already outstretched to break his fall. Sighing, the warlock pushed himself off the counter and strolled over to his boyfriend, wrapping one arm around his narrow waist from behind before clicking his fingers again to restart time. As the papers toppled over and spilled over the ground, the arm locked around Alec’s waist prevented him from falling, and he relaxed into the familiar hold.  
“Can’t you ever clear up in here?”, he complained, irritation colouring his tone, caused by a combination of the day’s stressful hunt and his frustration at the permanently messy state of their sort-of shared apartment.  
“Don’t I get a thank you?”, Magnus murmured against the cool skin of Alec’s shoulder; during the fight with the demon, his shirt had been torn, and now a gash in the material revealed a thin line of pale skin, marred by an angry red scratch.  
“No, it’s your fault I nearly tripped.” Untangling himself from the warlock’s thin arms, he carefully picked his way through the mass of objects scattered around the room until he reached the kettle, which he flicked on. Picking up the nearest item on the side, which just so happened to be a dirty spatula, he continued, brandishing it at Magnus angrily, “Now you’re going to help me tidy up all this mess you’ve made in just two days, and we are going to finish in less than two hours, or I swear I’m going back to the Institute for the weekend.”

Mugs in hand, they began attacking the clutter with a single-minded determination. Well. No. Not they. Alec began attacking the clutter with a single-minded determination, while Magnus quickly settled himself on the sofa as soon as it was deemed tidy and occasionally waved a hand, at which point a book would fly back onto the shelf, or a plate would fit itself in the dishwasher. Aware of Alec’s increasing frustration with him from the irritated sighs he let out, Magnus simply smirked, and brought his feet up to rest on the coffee table in front of him.   
“Hey, you missed a spot.”, he called, as the shadowhunter finished polishing the surfaces in the kitchen area, and Alec slowly turned to face him, glaring at him with icy blue eyes.  
“Are you going to help at all?”, he asked, voice dangerously low and threatening violence if Magnus said no. “Or shall I just go back to the Institute now?”  
“I’m helping, I’m helping.” Magnus protested, pushing himself off the sofa and beginning to actually tidy things away. Slowly, still glaring, Alec turned back to the kitchen counter.

Half an hour later, and Magnus was, well, bored. He had spent 30 whole minutes tidying his apartment. Tidying, in Magnus’ opinion, was a wholly unnecessary concept, except for when he was hosting a party of course, and he felt like a mundane going through the repetitive process of picking something up and putting it away. Knowing that Alec would likely complain if he only use magic to tidy up (it was lazy and he should learn to make an effort for once), he refrained from doing so except in dire situations, when he would have had to walk over to the other side of the room to put something away. However, as he bewitched a pillow to fly from the kitchen (he wasn’t sure what it was doing there) back into his bedroom, and it collided with the side of Alec’s head, that he had an idea. Every few minutes, under the pretence of putting something away, he made the nearest object fly into Alec, sending books to hit him lightly on the arm, and draping towels and blankets over his head as he tried to fold the clothes Magnus had flung haphazardly into a drawer.   
“Go away.”, he muttered through gritted teeth, after a luckily empty bowl had perched itself on his head like a white china hat.  
Shrugging, he merely replied, “You wanted me to help.”

It seemed to be when he started sending things that had already been tidied flying all over the flat that Alec really lost his patience with him, and throwing down the duster in frustration, he marched over to the warlock, who was finally looking at least slightly sheepish.  
“You, Magnus Bane,”, he said, poking his boyfriend’s chest, “Are a complete and utter asshole. Is it really that hard to spend two hours tidying up? You create the mess easy enough, don’t you?”  
Rolling his eyes and grinning easily, Magnus replied, “Oh come on, Alec, I’m bored. You’re my boyfriend, you’re not supposed to come over here to tidy. Besides, not everyone is as compulsively neat as you.”  
Seemingly lost for words, Alec threw his hands up in defeat. “I give up.”  
Watching his boyfriend stalk back to their room, fuming, Magnus sighed exasperatedly, halfway between feeling guilty for purposely annoying Alec, and laughing because this had been absolutely hilarious. Slowly, he made his way back to the sofa, grabbing a magazine and laying down across the cushions with a theatrical wave of his hand.  
Overnight bag hoisted over his uninjured shoulder and packed with the essentials he had brought with him, Alec pushed open the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway. The tidy hallway. Continuing down the empty corridor, he came to the main living room, and leant against the open door, raising his eyebrows at the warlock, who simply smirked from behind his magazine.  
Shaking his head and sighing softly, he spoke quietly and with not conviction whatsoever. “I hate you. You know that?”  
Magnus only laughed.


End file.
